Thank you for this comment. It gives me a lot to think about, and makes me want to respond in so many ways that I’m sure where to begin.
I’ve read e e cummings before, but that was probably 20 years ago or more, and I don’t know if I would say that I actually absorbed the poetry that I read by him. More likely, at that time in my life, my eyes scanned his words, and I tried to know or understand or feel them so that I could do what he and other people labeled as great writers were doing. As for his thoughts on writing, I don’t think I’ve ever read them.
The quote that you shared is intriguing. If a poet is a person who feels, what would you say a writer is? Or what do you think e e cummings would say a writer is?
I can’t specifically reference other writers or the essays where they’ve written about it, but I feel like many writers, especially those from the early 20th century and before, have said that poets are the people who truly feel things. Maybe that isn’t true and I’m only assuming this. I don’t know. But that sentiment is definitely something that I’ve heard before and have seen written by other people.
The issue I take with it is that it seems to say that a person who feels something and tries to express it in writing, but either doesn’t do it well, or does it in a way that is cliche or too unoriginal isn’t a poet. It also seems to suggest that people who don’t write well, don’t actually feel, even though they think they are feeling and were motivated to try to write poetry based on their feelings. Well, it doesn’t talk about people’s motivations for writing, but when I read the quote, I think that it makes that suggestion.
I don’t know what a poet is or what makes a good poem.
Didn’t somebody once say something like, I don’t know what good art is, but I know it when I see it? That’s how I feel about a lot of things.
My approach to writing is to create something that might spark an emotion in the reader, either through an image, a thought, a situation. Sometimes I try to capture my own emotions too, or I start with an original experience or emotion and then move away from it in the writing process.
You’ve given me lots to think about. Thank you.
I also really liked the thought at the end of your comment.
…when you think you’re a whole lot of other people - ideas are public property - but when you feel, you’re nobody but yourself.
I’m off to read some e e cummings.